November 22, 2005

[O]h, what a drubbing we took. Many, many readers pointed out to us that OSM™ was an oxymoron; the open source tech community expressed concern; and a very fine gentleman named Christopher Lydon at Open Source (www.radioopensource.org) politely pointed out that we might be trampling on his space. ...

[T]he whole experience of being caught with our pajamas down has been a bit embarrassing, but in the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity.

Even me? My biggest problem with the name "Open Source Media" was not the wound imagery ("open sores"), but that is was so thuddingly dull and corporate-sounding -- as if they hoped to suck the life out of blogging.

So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople--we did as we were told.

Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company....

Enough said. So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy revenue.

They're not the guys-in-suits. Some other guys, who once pushed them around, are the guys-in-suits.

Now that the name has been changed, will there be other changes? Will the site fill up with exciting, interesting material? Because it's the lack of good stuff to read that has always been their main problem. Did the guys-in-suits make that happen?

60 comments:

Throughout these last few days, I keep thinking that the Huffingtons dealt with ridicule with much more backbone than Roger and Charles and friends. Has everyone forgotten the funniest website of the year - Huffington's Toast? Arianna was ripped to shreds and then those shreds were put through a coffee grinder and I don't recall much of a complaint. Nope, that just kept doing what they were doing and it's become somewhat successful. I guess.

With Pajamas, they make grandiose pronouncements and deliver no content. People come knocking - hello, anyone in here? - and the faithful act like Althouse and Den Beste and Hogonice and Moxie, and many, many others are guilty of philosophical impurities. Not to mention the Open Source debacle and the very interesting claims of Dennis the Peasant.

So they've changed the name. Huzzah. What do they have to offer?

It's still wire copy from the Xinhua News Agency.

There's a link to NormBlog. Actually, it's a link to an inside page, but if you click again they claim they'll take you to Normblog. Gotta get those page clicks for the advertisers.

At the top is a post from the vaunted Barcelona staff. Whoa, I think this qualifies for www.bulwer-lytton.com/: A few days ago it was Liberia; today it's in Germany where a female will be taking power for the first time in the country's history (she's also the first head og government to have grown up in Germany's formerly Communist East, CNN reminds, and the youngest one since World War II, according to Bloomberg). No! not an honest to goodness FEMALE!

Dont't forget the tag: And, predictably, bloggers are starting to have their take...Well, thank God, because the world can't spin until bloggers have their take. I guess it's better than bloggers go wild.

I was surprised at the number of blogs I read that are OSM blogs. They all seemed more reasonable...more intelligent.

It's been almost a week and other than Roger L. Simon worried the internet will harm his daughter and the intelligence carnival, I have yet to see them offer anything of anything. Say what you will of Huffington Post, but at least they had crap to make fun of. Which is a heck of a lot better than being made fun of for having nothing.

-having to pay someone to make a mistake - not a good start - one would think they could have ascertained that themselves, the OSM title was not to be used - blaming 'the suits' only puts mud on the frosting which the cake didn't deserve in the first place. Witty, one-liners don't do a hell of alot for me, though I am only referencing Little Green Footballs, i.e. some pasted blurb on some world event is followed by several hundred 'cute' one-liners. I'm glad it's a free country though. By the way, of roughly the first 119+ respondents in LGF, I saw only one snide reference to you.

Goesh, it's like this: when the VC gives you three and a half million dollars, you tend to want to make them happy. At least they resisted eventually. (No doubt the name problems helped convince them.) I think Pajamas Media is a better name, anyway.

Bill, um, ... are you saying now that you'd prefer that Roger et al would have dealt with all the criticism by not changing anything in order to show "backbone"? So your point would be that you don't like the set up, but don't like that they're responding to criticisms because that makes them spineless --- doesn't that imply that you don't think the criticisms are all that important? Maybe even kind of trivial?

I'm not completely clear what the problem is Xinhua is --- it's not like no one else in the world uses copy from Xinhua. Nasty right wingers using Maoist copy? I don't get it.

Bearbee, I think you've got it exactly right. Doubly so when you realize that one of the jobs of the "branding consultants" would have been to identify any potential trademark issues....

Charlie, if it really is Charlie, doesn't get that Xinhua is a propaganda vehicle for the Chinese tyrants. Figures. What happened to being on the right side of history. As Roger is always patting himself on the back, that he is. And his "Brother Leeden" this and "Brother Leeden" that, and faster, faster. In the end, it seems it's the same old Roger, using "groovy" in his prose and diggin' Mao. (If not in word anymore, surely in deed.) Come'on CEO. Fire off a command. Have your staff execute it. "Stop the XIN, people." Roger would be all over this, and all his commentators too, if any media org. had a XIN feed running 24/7 in a prominent, or not so prominent, place. Hypocrites.

-- The Pajamanistas are groping toward a model that will generate significant sustained revenues from blogging, and bloggers want in on it, either directly or indirectly.

-- The Pajamanistas are perverting the artform!

-- The Pajamanistas are the Sinn Fein of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!

-- The Pajamanistas are not as clever as me!

-- The Pajamanistas would have been NOTHING without me! (I'm owed!)

-- The Pajamanistas are too slick!

-- The Pajamanistas are too hick!

-- The Pajamanistas had a party and I wasn't invited!

-- The Pajamanistas will crash and burn! (Pass the popcorn!)

The recipe for the cocktail differs with each obsessive, and each probably has a secret ingredient or two to add to the mix.

I hate to say it, but I'm pretty deeply unimpressed so far. They need more original content. The site needs a better design (from both an aesthetic and useability perspective). The energy level has been low. I find I don't particularly want to go back there, and I'm definitely interested in seeing blogging develop into a potentially profitable exercise.

I do give PJ Media credit for making corrections. And I've been in a company shafted by hired-gun suits, so my heart goes out to them over the (possibly actionably bad) branding mistakes. I think they've got a shot if Roger and Charles can make the fat-cats BACK OFF from the decision-making process; otherwise, I think it's going to shake itself apart.

And part of what makes Instapundit good is the way he gleefully links to anyone worthwhile. But Pajamas seems constrained to link only to their "members." The idea that their members represent the totality of what's worth reading is absurd, of course, no one there would even claim it. But again - what's the point? Where's the improvement, seen from the readers' end?

Still it pays to remember, the larger picture is that more people are reading good political analysis. Even if half of us writing are only stormtroopers of the "squadrons of digital brownshirts."

Paul, you could do a lot worse than copying the InstaPundit model, but with a (much more) aggressive sales campaign pitching ad space.

I just looked at his site. There are two ads showing now, both for Tennessee concerns (a law firm and a brewery). There's an empty slot for a Blogads ad. (It would cost $1200 for a week-long presence on InstaPundit. Why the HELL doesn't Nikon have an ad there? That would be peanuts for them, and Reynolds' readership demographic is almost certainly exactly what they target.)

Mr. Reynolds, you are my blogfather, and your intelligence, range, and sheer energy are awesome, but you need to get an agent, dude. Seriously.

Bearbee, the name did come from insiders. RSimon asked his commenters for name suggestions (Ann linked to the thread the other day), and "Open Source" was a big fave. It was a terrible choice for many (even then) obvious reasons, and it's doubtful any men in suits made the New Media mavens and professional writers and attorneys select a poor name and then not secure it. For an outfit that crowed about bringing "Honesty and Transparency" to the news and opinion scene, why did it choose instead to be less than forthcoming and manage perception with clumsy and let's say "inaccurate" statements about their name screw-up last week? Now that they're changing their name back to pre-OSM, one can't help but wonder just how much compensation the real Open Source Media asked for in order to relinquish the name? Guess too much.

Worse part is how most OSM bloggers and groupies were quiet or extremely defensive ("you're jealous" or "that's biz" or "you're mean") about the lame name shame and what happened to a fellow blogger who laid out time and money in working with some of the principals. Are they self-censoring and rationalizing out of self-interest, or do media competency and ethics issues suddenly not interest them? When bloggers are bound by non-disclosure agreements to OSM/PJM/XXX, can they tell us how the business really operates?

It's great that some of blogdom can go corporate, just not too great when the company is served more by its club of bloggers than the bloggers by it. May they stay credible, independent, fearless and factual. Last week's circling of the wagons over legitimate criticism and typical blog take-down is not encouraging.

Hey, I had a short follow-up comment that appeared briefly and then disappeared. I think it was a glitch, didn't seem particularly offensive.

Except I see it in the string of comments when I'm writing a comment, but it's not in the comments when I go back to the main page. Weird, man.

Just saying: to the extent that Pajamas/OSM is constrained from linking to absolutely any blogger who produces something noteworthy, with a main focus on its members, then from the average reader's perspective it's really not an improvment on what the free-ranging Instapundit has provided.

Whatsa - you may well be right that upping the ante on Instapudit might be a good model, but is that what they saw themselves doing? Maybe it is. But so far it's worse than Instapundit.

Charlie said... "Goesh, it's like this: when the VC gives you three and a half million dollars, you tend to want to make them happy."

They got $3.5M from Volokh Conspiracy? Viet Cong? I know Eugene has made some money, but sheesh! I know I know venture capitalist --- cool use of initials -- so "inside baseball".

I don't get (read -- really don't care) all the hubbub over OSM/Pajamas, etc., but the website does blow. It's like corporate skateboarding, multi-national (Sony BMG)punk music, Munch's The Scream on Post-Its.... Cool turns to crap. Going corporate and putting out pompous pronouncements sucks the cool out of blogging.

That may prove to not be the case, but whoring for the PRC, makes me wonder who the VC is for OSM, OK?

I think it was the lawyer suits who told them they had to drop the OSM name, not the VC suits.

Whatsapundit, I've been saying the same thing about blogs like Reynolds and Volokh for a long time. The demographics are what advertisers only dream about, but the big companies like Nikon seem mired in the past.

Print media circulation is continuing to decline as people move to other sources of information including blogs and TV advertising is reaching fewer and fewer eyes as viewers figure out how to bypass them using Tivo and other contraptions, but large companies haven't figured it out and don't know where to put their enormous advertising budgets.

This is what I had thought the PJM would do. It was my understanding of their original mission that they would serve as agents by selling blogs to advertisers while at the same time educating them about an untapped potential for sales they didn't dream existed.

I think this would have worked and they might have become the Wm. Morris Agy of the blogosphere. Time will tell how it all works out.

Bill said: "There's a link to NormBlog. Actually, it's a link to an inside page, but if you click again they claim they'll take you to Normblog. Gotta get those page clicks for the advertisers."

Check out their blogroll. Every link goes to an internal page with the real link, a one-line description of the blog(ger) in question, and, of course, an ad. I really don't like pages that add an unnecessary step to my surfing experience.

This reinforces the theme of the criticism I've seen. They're not doing anything new, and they're not doing it well, either.

You hit it on the nose, Ann. If "the guys in suits made us change our name", then it's the guys in suits dictating how and what they can write. "But it's not!" they'll protest. Yeah, it is. They aren't on the phone telling you what to write, true. But it's that inner guy in a suit that Roger & company are listening to who are running the show now. Those same self-interests that bloggers cut their teeth complaining about are now central to their enterprise. Freewheeling? Devil may care? Hell for leather? Not in the guy-with-suit lexicon. Try "dull", "cautious" and "plodding". Gotta get a return for the investors. Gotta make it work. Get those wagons in a circle, it's us against them - them being anyone not us.

Maybe one should watch out for taking the obtuse-next-step, paulfrommpls, especially when stepping in it and not up a rung higher.

It's one thing to advocate for corporate profiteering by blogs and quite another to defend ineptness, hypocrisy and a poor blog aggregator product just because the Kos trust-fund types hate the Man. Meritocracy implies freedom to succeed and not freedom from criticism. Bloggers who are pro writers or lawyers and who often go after others with a vengeance in the course of their blogging cut a pathetic picture when they whine about suits making them do this or about others being mean to them over the bizarre and rather unbelievable mistakes they've made. Are they responsible for this baby, or what?

A couple of posts ago, the user paulfrommpls wrote: "One always does want to watch out for taking the obtuse anti-next-step role in a repeat of the old food coop wars. Ugly time, for those few hundred Americans paying attention.

"(The losers then have become part of the core of the Kos crew now. Don't know what that means. They're related to the 'all music should be free man!' contingent.)"

Could somebody please decipher this for me? "Food coop"? "Anti-next-step"? Huh? I don't mean to come off rude -- I'm genuinely eager to know what paulfrommpls was trying to convey.

Once upon a time, some friends who met at a bedwetters support group following 9/11 (us) got together and decided it would be super neato to start a blog company that noboby, including ourselves, could figure out what in the hell it was supposed to be. "We could call it Peeholes Media," we said, referring to our now-famous propensity to pee ourselves when anyone who looks remotely Muslim gets within 30 yards of us. Well, we were as surprised as anyone when we managed to raise a significant amount of capital to form said whatever-in-the-hell-it-is....

Jim - I'm just saying, watch out. Just a thought. The new co-ops also probably screwed up too and were made fun of along the same lines.

Having etc. - "Food coop" should be "food co-op." In the early 70's, the small ultra funky original co-ops began to give way to slightly bigger and more professionally-managed ones with a wider variety of less-pure and alternative foods. That's "the next step" I mean. It's the first step on the path to a place like Whole Foods, if you know what that is. The mainstreaming of the alternative. Some of it is inevitable and some of it is good.

I think that last remark does not do Roger justice at all. Nor the person saying it. He certainly isn't anti-muslim. Anti-muslim fascists blowing up other muslims (and us), well, yes, he is anti-them and so am I. Focus people.

Well that certainly elevates the level of discussion a notch or two now doesn't it. (not why I'm commenting. I'll just step around).

OSM now reminds me of the "Indymedia/Google News" affair. Where Indymedia was previously listed on Google among/with the world's news providers. When most of the stuff linked to them, on Google, was simpleton propaganda.

Sarah, (yes, I got the hints, I know who you are), what the bloody hell is this thing with wondering about whether I'm the same person as Jakemanjack and, now I guess, Corvan? It's not like I'm particularly shy about my identity --- as I told Jakemanjack (who emailed me after my suggestion), my email address, with my real name, is in my profile. I'm the Charlie you know, my Japanese name is Yukio, and I have a Japanese name because (as I told you) my Ura no Senki teacher couldn't pronounce "Charlie" because she was a 90 year old Japanese lady with no teeth.

Are you really so arrogant to think that there couldn't be two people reading Althouse who disagree with you? Or two people on Comcast? (Since I got email from JMJ, I know it's a Comcast address. Is the IP address part of what you're on about? Do you have any idea how many people get high speed internet from Comcast?)

I mean, Jesus Kee-rist, if you can't think of something stupider to complain about, could you try to be more amusing about it?

Besides the fact you are these other people too (how can one know?--because you were sloppy, and your attempts to make up for it transparent), though not Corvan--that was a joke, I guess I'm just obsessed with your obsession over Ann's obsession with Simons incompetence/and lack of Mensch-ness.

Disclaimer: I don't think Ann is obsessing. Which leaves the two of us.

This was fortunate. You caught me on my last run through the blogosphere. I do have a case, with some very interesting aspects, which if presented to you in the right setting and with sufficent detail, and Ann's blog certainly is not the right setting for this, I believe you would agree that it is sound, so to speak. That is to say, you'd fully understand how it is not the case that I have misled myself. Which is not to say you might not have an explanation. The two aren't mutually exclusive. So i take you at your word, but still am unable to fully believe. My last post for a year or so. Retirement brings new adventures. What will have things become this time in 2006?

Happy Thanksgiving Charlie!!

Until we meet again. Next time I'm sure we'll be in total agreement about something important. Boring I know.......